Exam 1: The Where, Why, and How of Data Collection

The Dalton Company has recently made a decision to build a new plant in Denver. In making this decision it used data supplied by the U.S. Census Bureau. For the Dalton Company, these data are examples of:

The marketing division of a company is interested in determining whether increased advertising will increase sales in three of its target cities. Three levels of advertising are used and the sales are recorded for the month immediately following the ads. In this case, the data are considered to have been collected using an experiment.

When data are organized into levels, the highest data level is:

Which of the following statements is true?

A sample is selected from a population in cases where selecting data from the entire population is either very difficult or very expensive.

A tire manufacturing company is interested in obtaining data on stopping distances for each of the three main tread types made by the company. The data collection method that would be most likely used in this case would be:

When comparing experiments, surveys, and direct observation as methods of data collection, the method that would typically be the least expensive is surveys.

An Internet service provider has the capability of tracking the time that each of its customers spends connected to the Internet during a month. These data would constitute:

If a population is very large, it may be better to select a sample from the population than to try to obtain a census in an effort to reduce measurement error.

What are the major categories of statistical tools that will be covered in this course?

The method of data collection called direct observation is always associated with gathering data from people.

When an administrator at a local hospital prepares a series of charts and graphs pertaining to the patients that have stayed at the hospital during the past month, she is using which general category of statistical analysis?

Possibly the most frequently used nonstatistical sampling procedure is the simple random sample.

Hypothesis testing and estimation are two statistical tools that are used to draw inferences about a large data set based on a subset of the data.

Recording vehicle type as sedan, minivan, pick-up truck, etc. is an example of qualitative data.

An accountant who recently examined 200 accounts from a company's total of 4,000 accounts in an effort to estimate the percentage of all accounts that have incorrect journal entries is using descriptive statistical analysis to reach the conclusion.

The sales data for a company measured in the week following an increased ad campaign would be considered cross-sectional data.

The company that makes a new weight loss pill claims that people who use this pill according to instructions will lose an average of 20 pounds during a four-month period. They say the claim is based on a study of 300 people. Which of the following statistical methods was most likely used to arrive at the company's conclusion?

The use of charts and graphs is an example of:

Explain what an experimental design is.